Erin Patterson is sentenced to Australia for three murders after poisoning her -laws with mushrooms – Chicago Tribune
By Charlotte Graham-Mclay and Rod McGurk
Melbourne, Australia (AP) – The Australian Erin Patterson was sentenced on Monday for having assassinated three parents of her separate husband by deliberately serving them as poisonous mushrooms during a lunch.
The jury for the Supreme Court of the Victoria State made a verdict after six days of deliberations, after a trial of nine weeks which drew the attention of Australia. Patterson faces a perpetuity imprisonment and will be sentenced later, although a date for the public has not yet been planned.
Patterson, who sat on the bench between two prison officers, showed no emotion but clinted with eyes while the verdicts were read.
Three of the four guests of Patterson’s lunch – their in -laws Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson – died in hospital after 2023 food in his house in Leongatha, in which he served the individual Ollington Wellington overlord which contained mushrooms of death, also known as Canalejas.
She was also found guilty of having tried to kill Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived food. The jury concluded that he had poisoned his express guests.
It was not played that Patterson served the mushrooms or that the cakes killed their guests. The jury had to decide if it knew that lunch contained fatal mushrooms and if it intended to die.
The verdicts of guilt, which should be unanimous, said that the jurors rejected the defense of Patterson according to which the presence of poisonous mushrooms in food was a terrible accident, caused by the erroneous inclusion of collected mushrooms which it had identified as toxic. Prosecutors did not offer reason for the murders, but during the trial, they underlined the tense relations between Patterson and her separate husband, and the frustration she had felt for her parents in the past.
The case revolved around the question of whether Patterson meticulously planned a triple murder or if he accidentally killed three people he loved, including the only surviving grandparents of his children. His lawyers said he had no reason to do so: he had recently moved to a beautiful new house, he was in a comfortable financial situation, he had exclusive custody of his children and was about to start studying to obtain a title in nursing and obstetrics.
But the prosecutors suggested that Patterson had two faces and looked like a woman with a good relationship with her in the laws, while her private feelings about them remained hidden. Her relationship with her separate husband, Simon Patterson, who was invited to the fatal lunch but did not attend, deteriorated the previous year, said the prosecutor’s office.
Every moment of fatal lunch has been analyzed
The simplest events of what happened that day and immediately later, it is enough to be disputed. But Patterson’s motivations for what he did and why they were analyzed in detail during the long trial, in which they declared more than 50 witnesses.
The individual Salomillos Wellington that Patterson served to his guests was a point of friction, because the recipe he used contained instructions for a single family part. The prosecutors said that he turned to individual parties to be able to mix the parts of the other guests, but not his own, with fatal mushrooms, but Patterson said he could not find the right ingredients to make the recipe as indicated.
Almost all the other details of the fateful day were analyzed, because the reasons why Patterson sent his children to watch a film before the arrival of his guests, why he added additional dry mushrooms from his pantry to the recipe, why he did not fall ill when the other guests did, and why he had a dehydrator after death and told the researchers that he did not have.
Patterson recognized some lies during his testimony, in particular that he had never collected mushrooms or had a dehydrator. But he said that these statements had panicked when his food had killed people.
He said that he had not fallen ill as much as the other guests because he vomited after food due to a diet. He denied having said to his guests that he had cancer as a pretext to explain why he had invited them to his home that day.
The case captured Australia
The strange and tragic case remained in the minds of the Australians and fell between the public and the media. During the trial, five separate podcasts analyzed procedures every day and several media made blogs giving stories at the time of more than two months of evidence.
The production of at least one television series and a documentary on the case was scheduled. Australian crimes editors were suspended were seen in court throughout the trial.
When half an hour was learned before the verdict that the court again gathered, around 40 spectators brought in court in the rural city of Morwell in the hope of seeing the result in person. The media reported that relatives of the victims were not one of the people present.
Before the verdict, the newspapers published photos of black confidentiality screens erected at the entrance to the house of Erin Patterson. Dozens of journalists from all over Australia and foreign media surrounded the friends of Patterson as they left the court on Monday.
“I am sad, but that’s what it is,” said a friend, Ali Rose, who wore sunglasses and had trouble containing tears. When asked what Patterson felt while the verdicts were read, Rose said: “I don’t know.”
___
Graham-McLay reported Wellington, New Zealand.
Originally published:
